Our house is on the market!

Not a lot has been happening in house-reno land. Well at least "photo-worthy" stuff. We have met with the contractor, received his un-official contract, met with one loan officer, been in touch with the appraiser, called another loan officer at a credit union and a mortgage lendor. Spent lots of time talking about the house, thinking about the house, and dreaming about the house. But no physical progress.

When we finally pulled the trigger and hired the contractor we liked the best, he told us to expect the house to be done in 90 to 120 working days.

I almost fell off my chair.

What I was thinking would be a year long project turned into 3-4 months away. Say WHAT?!?

Now, I know that timelines and contractors go together like oil and water so we are fully expecting a 6 month journey (at least) but even then...much shorter than we anticipated.

My reaction was violent enough to make the contractor....wait a second. Let's introduce you so I don't have to refer to him as "contractor". Readers, meet Brandon. Brandon Columbus from BOK Construction out of Shawnee. There. That's better.

So, when he mentioned 90-120 days I reacted so crazily that he startled and said, "What? Is that not ok?" I picked my butt up off the floor, caught my breath and said, "No. That's great."

Then I went and took a xanax.

Not really about that last part, but my heart was pumping. I was excited and scared and overwhelmed and jittery and nervous. So much to do!

We decided to go ahead and put our house on the market. There have been 3 houses on our street that have been for sale for over a year. No lie. If it sells quickly yeah for us for not having to pay two mortgages. Yes, we will be homeless and probably move into a studio rental or something, but oh well.

Keith, our realtor (who actually sold us this house!) came over last Friday afternoon. We signed 1.2 million pieces of paper, he took a few pics, and stuck the sign in the front yard. By Saturday he already had a showing scheduled. OMG.

We spent all day Saturday de-cluttering and boxing up stuff that we for sure won't need for a long, long time. The house looks so clean and organized! :)

Here's what the house looked like right before the showing on Sunday. Quite a few pics, but I wanna remember this home!

Front Yard:

Kitchen:

Dining Room:

Living Room:

 

Master Bedroom:

And attached Master Bath with shower:

Laundry Room/Craft Room:

Hallway and Hall Bath:

Kids' Bedroom:

Third Bedroom/Office/Bar!

Backyard:

And wait...the realtor just called. We have another showing on Wednesday!

Makin' 'em work hard.

Farm boys in the making. They were helping us haul trash to the dumpster!

Bye Bye Popcorn!

That's right! We scraped the popcorn ceilings!

It was so...dare I say...FUN!?

We tag teamed it for most of the time...one of us would spray the water/dishsoap solution and really soak the ceiling down and the other one would scrape it away. We started in the back bedrooms and it was going SO fast! We finished the entire back of the house before lunch on Saturday! 

See, it's as easy as 1. 2. 3.!

That is until you get to a room that has been smoked in and painted over 100x. Yuck. The living room was NOT coming down. Plus it has raised ceilings making it extra hard. We left it for last and on Sunday I spent over an hour cussing and trying my darndest and ended up scraping like 5 square feet. We gave up.

Brandon said that by doing it ourselves we would save over $3,000! So even though we didn't do the living room, I'm sure we saved a chunk of change!

Beauty amongst the rubble.

*A beautiful wisteria grows right outside our garage...though it is completely covered in dead leaves and branches. Hopefully next spring it will be unhindered and we will be able to thoroughly enjoy it!

The last week-end that we worked on the house was March 23-25. We got a lot done, scraping popcorn and such. Then the following week-end my Uncle Brad died. We found out exactly 3 months to the day of when Uncle Ronnie died. It was and is terrible. We are so, so sad. The next 2 weeks were a whirlwind of family and grieving and time spent out at Mimi's. Nothing happened at the house, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered except being with family. It's funny, because even though my heart was hurting so deeply, I loved seeing all of our lives put on hold so that we could hold each other and care for each other. No other plans, no other to-dos except be by each other's side.

Needless to say, this blog was the last thing on my mind...but here are a few old posts from that week-end over a month ago.